Penguin Eggs

Review: Sandwood
Summer 2018 (Issue 78) Please visit the publication website by clicking here where you can access the full review.

Fiddler and composer Duncan Chisholm draws his considerable inspiration from the breathtaking natural beauty of his native Scottish Highlands. Think of his epic Strathglass Trilogy – Affric, Canaich, and Farrar – named after the three remote glens that cut across the Highlands and home to generations of his family. Arguably, the three best traditional albums recorded in Scotland in the past decade.

And now Chisholm turns his attention to Sandwood Bay – a remote beach 12.5km south of Cape Wrath, the most northern tip on the west coast of the Scottish mainland……

….. the indisputable eminent fiddle composer of his generation.

The Living Tradition

Review: Sandwood
April / May 2018 (Issue 123) Please visit the publication website by clicking here to access the April issue and full review.

Surely the smoothest of Scottish fiddlers, Duncan Chisholm has won more awards than most and released a range of recordings…..
Little is straight-forward here – arrangements include a dozen instruments and layer upon layer of harmonies – yet Duncan’s music speaks clearly through the complexity, communicating the special nature of Sandwood.

Songlines 4**** stars

Review: Sandwood
April 2018 (Issue 136) Please visit the publication website by clicking here to access the April issue and full review.

Chisholm is a master of the pictorial and his playing, with its oaky lower-range tone and keening upper register, consistently conveys a sense of place. Together with pianist, flautist and co-writer Hamish Napier, plus a team that includes guitarist and bassist Ross Hamilton, Jarlath Henderson on uilleann pipes and whistles and Donald Shaw providing piano and string arrangements, Chisholm has created a gorgeous soundscape.

fRoots

Review: Sandwood
March 2018 (Issue 417)

With joyously surging melodies that revel in the transcendent wonder of nature, Chisholm conjures an inspirational vision of something greater than ourselves…… This is spiritual music which empathises deeply with humanity’s continuing search for transcendental beauty and enduring truth.

The Scotsman

Saturday 10th February 2018
Review: from Duncan Chisholm Live at Celtic Connections 2018
4**** stars (click here to read the full review)

No doubt like the eponymous beach, the performance had its sublime moments, Chisholm’s fiddle soaring and circling over drifting string harmonies, or floating over Hamish Napier’s spare piano in the beautiful An Ribhinn Donn; while stormier weather saw the band accelerate into a formidable tidal surge, as the Running the Cross set or The Erchless Scout. …… Chisholm’s fiddle voice could verge on the ethereal.

The Herald

Monday 5th February 2018
Review: Duncan Chisholm live at the Celtic Connections Festival 2018
4**** stars (click here to read the full review)

Chisholm is a master at reflecting landscapes and geographical features in compositions, both original and borrowed, and his fiddle playing, melodically true with an almost tangible Highland soulfulness, conveys not only a sense of topography but the emotions these places stir in him.

The Scotsman

Sunday 5th February 2017

Success of Celtic Connections Festival 2017

Well over 100,000 people have flocked to shows at Glasgow’s Celtic Connections music festival – for the tenth year in a row. Organisers have revealed more than 80 per cent of performances at the 18 day festival were completely sold out. There were 176 full houses – 69 more than last year over the course of the event – which features 2375 performers from more than 50 countries.

Singer-songwriters Karine Polwart, Martha Wainwright and Laura Marling, fiddler Duncan Chisholm, accordionist Martin Green and a tribute to the late Shooglenifty musician Angus Grant were among the hottest tickets, as attendances soared over 110,000.

Folk Radio UK

23rd January 2018

‘Sandwood’: Album Review

“Magnificently atmospheric pieces”…. to read the full review please visit the Folk Radio UK website by clicking here.

The Herald

5***** review of ‘Ballantyne’, performed at An Lanntair, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis on Sat 27 August 2016.

IF THE Wee Frees have long been thought of as a dour lot who shun music in their worship, the world premiere of Ballantyne in Stornoway this weekend should give the lie to that.

For what Hollywood composer Craig Armstrong and his collaborator, Lewis musician and church elder Calum Martin, have created is a mind-blowing composition based around the beautifully harmonic tradition of Gaelic Psalm singing.

The Herald

5***** review of ‘Just for Gordon’ performed at the Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow. Jan 2016.

From pipe band to solo pipers, here including his brother, Iain, and from Scottish folk groups to the wider world, Duncan exerted an influence and left an indelible impression. It was great to hear stories from those who beat a path to Edradour in search of Duncan tunes and wisdom, and worth turning up just to catch sometime bandmate, fiddler Duncan Chisholm caress and pass on The Sleeping Tune to Susana Seivane, playing her native Galician bagpipe, the gaita, both capturing the soulfulness that Duncan exuded.

Folk Radio UK

Live Review – MG Alba Scots Trad Music Awards Dec 2015

Of course, Na Trads just wouldn’t be the same without live music and the celebrations included a string of performances from the very best in the business, as exemplified by Aly Bain, Phil Cunningham & Violet Tulloch. Skye based electronic/trad fusion band Niteworks opened the proceedings, closely followed by Peatbog Faeries, who also closed the show. The lads performed two typically lively and engaging sets. Innovative clarsach player Catriona MacKay joined fiddler Chris Stout (fresh from bringing Hirda, Shetland’s first ever opera to the stage), and newcomers Dosca thrilled the audience with their unique blend of jazz and folk.

If, however, I was asked to choose the most memorable performance of the evening it would have to be when Duncan Chisholm took to the stage with an ensemble that included Greg Lawson, Su-a Lee, Jarlath Henderson and Innes Watson in some utterly enthralling selections from Duncan’s Strathglass Trilogy

The Arts Desk

Songlines Encounters Festival, Kings Place, London

Duncan Chisholm collaboration with Vahdat Sisters.

The fifth Songlines Encounters Festival at Kings Place brought together artists from around the world, offerering a powerful cultural kick-back against all manner of extremist positions. The opening Thursday featured young Portuguese Fado singer Gisela João, with Cypriot trio Monsieur Doumani, and the closing Saturday paired the Shikor Bangladesh All Stars with the Anglo-Bangladeshi Afrobeat Latin grooves of Lokkhi Terra.

The Herald

13th Feb 2015

The Gathering Tour, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh

In Kin, his Herald Angel-winning Blas festival commission from 2007, Duncan Chisholm used location shots and film to illustrate the land that inspired his music. Not to denigrate the quality of that photography but Chisholm didn’t need any such visual aids in this presentation by his dream band.

The Inverness-based fiddler has the ability, using subtle bow strokes in a similar way to an artist’s brush strokes, to put a strong image, a real sense of place in the listener’s mind. When he plays Craskie, from the second album in his Strathglass trilogy, Canaich, his soul-deep feeling for this spot that’s part of his family’s history is such that you’re taken from concert hall seat to the great outdoors.

Album Review – Duncan Chisholm Live at Celtic Connections

The Scotsman

***** Review – Celtic Connections Opening Concert, Glasgow

It’s been said about previous Celtic Connections first nights, but this really was the festival in a nutshell – as far as that’s remotely possible for a single concert, however lavish, when you’re talking about an 18-day event comprising hundreds of gigs, by artists from dozens of countries, spanning myriad musical styles.

Proceedings began with a graceful link back to the inaugural show back in 1994, as fiddler Duncan Chisholm – who headlined with Wolfstone on that occasion – led his own quartet in a typically choice selection of spine-tingling airs and fiendishly catchy dance tunes, meanwhile highlighting Celtic Connections’ Scottish traditional bedrock, as did Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis, with a mouthwatering foretaste of her forthcoming new album. This year’s Commonwealth strand, ahead of the Games, was flagged up both by redoubtable Quebecois visitors the Yves Lambert Trio, and a stirringly soulful, funky contribution from Malawi’s Peter Mawanga and the Amaravi Movement, whose guitar-led, marimba-patterned sound was at once hypnotically smooth and full of vibrant textures, interwoven with richly expressive male/female vocals.

Even amidst this diverse musical cornucopia, there was no mistaking the most thrilling section of the programme, which saw violinist Nicola Benedetti join forces with half a dozen or so leading folkies – including Fowlis, Chisholm, Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham – for a spellbinding encounter between classical and trad, in which Benedetti achieved moments of truly exquisite symbiosis, most of all in a brilliant cadenza slotted between two Scott Skinner tuns, and a sublime slow duet with Bain.

by Sue Wilson.

The Arts Desk

**** Review – Duncan Chisholm – Live at Celtic Connections

“It’s a gorgeous set that has a cinematic widescreen clarity, with a sense of place, landscape and history roving through its tunes.”

fRoots

Jan/Feb 2014

Chisholm is a Scottish traditional fiddle player, famous for his work with Wolfstone and The Julie Fowlis Band, and for his trilogy of solo albums Farrar, Canaich and Affric which are musical portraits of the three glens of Strathglass where Chisholm’s family roots run seven centuries deep. The glens are beautiful but desolate places as a result of the clearances of the Highland Gaelic people that took place in the 18th and 19th Centuries. This Live album completes Chisholm’s Strathglass project. In his own words: “The Strathglass Suite is based on my last three albums – making an orchestral arrangement around a core traditional band of six. The project required a fitting conclusion, where those cinematic episodes I had imagined could really come to life.” Accompanying on this album are Jarlath Henderson (uilleann pipes/whistles), Matheu Watson (guitar), Allan Henderson (piano/fiddle), Ross Hamilton (bass), Martin O’Neill (bodhran). The fifteen-strong string and brass ensemble are led by violinist Greg Lawson.

This album brims with love for the depopulated valleys where Chisholm grew up, and from which so many people were cleared and shipped to another continent. The soul of this music is akin to Klezmer, which also expresses the pain of expulsion and exile. Chisholm’s fiddle hits the same heartstrings as a slow nigun or doina played by Isaac Stern or Itzhak Perlman. Like Klezmer, this music does more than evoke a traditional rural culture: it also speaks of that culture’s catastrophic collision with history. Even the dance tunes are tinged with sadness. Like the Klezmorim, Chisholm is a master of the slow air, and he draws every drop of emotion out of each soulful note. Chisholm is keenly aware that the violin is the instrument that most closely resembles the human voice, and in all his music he tries to mimic the human voice as much as he can. His fiddle’s long, sustained notes tremble and shudder like a human voice sobbing with emotion. Try, for instance, Caoineadh Johnny Sheain Jeaic/ Nuair Bhios Mi Leam Fhin. The fiddle is so powerfully empathetic, it is difficult to listen without weeping.

By Paul Matheson

The Sunday Herald

Album Review – Duncan Chisholm – Live at Celtic Connections

Chisholm’s Strathglass Trilogy has just gained the perfect fourth instalment. Drawn from the three albums the Inverness-based fiddler recorded to capture the Highland landscape that his paternal line has called home for 700 years, the music on this superb recording brings his fiddle and band together with perfectly weighted string and brass arrangements that let his instrument sing with heartfelt longing, atmosphere and joy. So much of Chisholm’s own life, as well as his ancestors’, is bound up in these airs and dance tunes, and it is all communicated by a musician completely at the top of his game: the opening Unknown Air keening its yearning melody; the birth of his first son producing elation you can almost touch; and the parting Mallai Chroch Shli combining gorgeously measured windswept beauty on fiddle and wildly exciting piping from Jarlath Henderson. If you were at the concert, it will all come back to you in euphoric waves; if you weren’t, this will emphatically take you there.

By Rob Adams

The Guardian

14th November 2013

**** Album Review – Duncan Chisholm – Live at Celtic Connections

The title does this album scant justice. Yes, Scottish fiddle player Duncan Chisholm was at Celtic Connections this year, but it was a very special event. Joined by five of Scotland’s finest players and a string and brass ensemble, he gave the first performance of The Strathglass Suite, an ambitious instrumental work comprised of pieces from the three-album Strathglass Trilogy he has taken six years to make. Chisholm is best known for his role with folk-rockers Wolfstone and the Julie Fowlis band, but has emerged as a major solo artist with this epic tribute to the area of the Highlands where his family have lived for 700 years. This is cinematic music, with elegant, haunting airs matched against jaunty, rousing pieces, his delicate fiddle work joined by fiddle, bass, guitar and uilleann pipes.

Scottish Abum of the Year Award 2013

Longlist of nomations includes ‘Affric’

Duncan is delighted to hear that his latest release, Affric has been included within the longlist for the Scottish Music Industry Association’s ‘Scottish Album of the Year Award’. The 20 albums on the list represent a dazzling range of genres and musical styles highlighting, once again, the extraordinary depth of talent being produced in Scotland. Open to Scottish artists who released albums in 2012, the longlist is the product of a rigorous and thorough nomination process, with submissions received by 100 specially-invited nominators from the Scottish and UK music industries as well as elsewhere in the arts and media.

A four-week promotion of the music / artists included within the longlist will follow, allowing the public to stream every one of the twenty longlisted titles. Be sure to visit the SAY Award website here to download their app or read about and listen to the wealth of Scottish music that has been included within the longlist. Congratulations to all those artists on the list. It is wonderful to be part of a national arts prize which strives to focus attention on the Scottish music scene and in particular, on the fact that it has become one of the most vibrant, influential and well respected in the world. Enjoy the music….

BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards comes to Celtic Connections

fRoots

Album Review – Affric

On the quiet, Wolfstone founder member Duncan Chisholm has always been one of the finer and more expressive Scottish fiddlers, with a delicate touch and rare sensitivity when required. His solo album Affric marks the end of a six year project, being the final part of The Strathglass Trilogy, a musical representation of the highland glens that form the ancestral lands of the ancient Chisholm clan.

Songlines

**** Album Review – Affric

Final part of Caledonian concept-album trilogy.
Chisholm was born and raised near Inverness, in the Scottish Highlands. He learned under the late, great fiddler player, composer and instrument maker Donald Riddell, is a regular player with Julie Fowlis and has his own band, Wolfstone. Affric is the third and final part of his epic Strathglass Trilogy, six years in the making, following the previous volumes Farrar and Canaich.

Affric is Duncan’s musical homage to the ancient Chisholm clan lands north-west of Loch Ness. Glen Affric is home to ancient Caledonian pine woods, lochs, moorlands and mountains, and it’s easy to see them all moving through the mind’s eye as the 11 beautiful conceived instrumental tracks take us through a suite that begins with a traditional air, the kind of tune that Chisholm’s pure tone and expressive feel raises to the sublime. Self-penned tunes mix with pieces by Phil Cunningham, Rory Campbell and others, and there’s an excerpt from the poet Neil Munro’s ‘To Exiles’ read by piper Allan MacDonald. Other guests include Patsy Reid on fiddle and viola, Tony Byrne and Ross Hamilton on guitars – driving the evocative, beautiful ‘The Flooded Meadow’ – plus accordion, uillean pipes and Phil Cunningham’s piano. There’s a lot of musical variation throughout, with contrasting textures, tones and atmospheres, whether it be the guitar-driven otherworldliness of ‘The Erchless Scout‘, the lyrical warmth of ‘The House in Rose Valley‘ or the unadorned beauty and epic landscape of ‘Unknown Air‘. Beautifully recorded and presented, Affric represents some of the finest instrumental music from Scotland’s new generation of players.

By Tim Cumming

Songlines (Best Albums of 2012 – Affric)

Covering music from traditional and popular to contemporary and fusion, Songlines features artists from all around the globe. Duncan is delighted that Affric has been included within their Best Albums of 2012. Read all about why Songlines have hand picked an eclectic mix of music to be included within their ten Best of 2012, in the Jan / Feb 2013 issue of the magazine which will be available on general purchase on 7 December 2012. Affric will also be featured within the Songlines podcast for that issue.

The Living Tradition

Review: Sandwood
April / May 2018 (Issue 123) Please visit the publication website by clicking here to access the April issue and full review.

Surely the smoothest of Scottish fiddlers, Duncan Chisholm has won more awards than most and released a range of recordings…..
Little is straight-forward here – arrangements include a dozen instruments and layer upon layer of harmonies – yet Duncan’s music speaks clearly through the complexity, communicating the special nature of Sandwood.

Folk Radio UK

23rd January 2018

‘Sandwood’: Album Review

“Magnificently atmospheric pieces”…. to read the full review please visit the Folk Radio UK website by clicking here.

The Scotsman

Sunday 5th February 2017

Success of Celtic Connections Festival 2017

Well over 100,000 people have flocked to shows at Glasgow’s Celtic Connections music festival – for the tenth year in a row. Organisers have revealed more than 80 per cent of performances at the 18 day festival were completely sold out. There were 176 full houses – 69 more than last year over the course of the event – which features 2375 performers from more than 50 countries.

Singer-songwriters Karine Polwart, Martha Wainwright and Laura Marling, fiddler Duncan Chisholm, accordionist Martin Green and a tribute to the late Shooglenifty musician Angus Grant were among the hottest tickets, as attendances soared over 110,000.

The Herald

5***** review of ‘Ballantyne’, performed at An Lanntair, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis on Sat 27 August 2016.

IF THE Wee Frees have long been thought of as a dour lot who shun music in their worship, the world premiere of Ballantyne in Stornoway this weekend should give the lie to that.

For what Hollywood composer Craig Armstrong and his collaborator, Lewis musician and church elder Calum Martin, have created is a mind-blowing composition based around the beautifully harmonic tradition of Gaelic Psalm singing.

The Herald

5***** review of ‘Just for Gordon’ performed at the Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow. Jan 2016.

From pipe band to solo pipers, here including his brother, Iain, and from Scottish folk groups to the wider world, Duncan exerted an influence and left an indelible impression. It was great to hear stories from those who beat a path to Edradour in search of Duncan tunes and wisdom, and worth turning up just to catch sometime bandmate, fiddler Duncan Chisholm caress and pass on The Sleeping Tune to Susana Seivane, playing her native Galician bagpipe, the gaita, both capturing the soulfulness that Duncan exuded.

Folk Radio UK

Live Review – MG Alba Scots Trad Music Awards Dec 2015

Of course, Na Trads just wouldn’t be the same without live music and the celebrations included a string of performances from the very best in the business, as exemplified by Aly Bain, Phil Cunningham & Violet Tulloch. Skye based electronic/trad fusion band Niteworks opened the proceedings, closely followed by Peatbog Faeries, who also closed the show. The lads performed two typically lively and engaging sets. Innovative clarsach player Catriona MacKay joined fiddler Chris Stout (fresh from bringing Hirda, Shetland’s first ever opera to the stage), and newcomers Dosca thrilled the audience with their unique blend of jazz and folk.

If, however, I was asked to choose the most memorable performance of the evening it would have to be when Duncan Chisholm took to the stage with an ensemble that included Greg Lawson, Su-a Lee, Jarlath Henderson and Innes Watson in some utterly enthralling selections from Duncan’s Strathglass Trilogy

The Arts Desk

Songlines Encounters Festival, Kings Place, London

Duncan Chisholm collaboration with Vahdat Sisters.

The fifth Songlines Encounters Festival at Kings Place brought together artists from around the world, offerering a powerful cultural kick-back against all manner of extremist positions. The opening Thursday featured young Portuguese Fado singer Gisela João, with Cypriot trio Monsieur Doumani, and the closing Saturday paired the Shikor Bangladesh All Stars with the Anglo-Bangladeshi Afrobeat Latin grooves of Lokkhi Terra.

The Herald

13th Feb 2015

The Gathering Tour, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh

In Kin, his Herald Angel-winning Blas festival commission from 2007, Duncan Chisholm used location shots and film to illustrate the land that inspired his music. Not to denigrate the quality of that photography but Chisholm didn’t need any such visual aids in this presentation by his dream band.

The Inverness-based fiddler has the ability, using subtle bow strokes in a similar way to an artist’s brush strokes, to put a strong image, a real sense of place in the listener’s mind. When he plays Craskie, from the second album in his Strathglass trilogy, Canaich, his soul-deep feeling for this spot that’s part of his family’s history is such that you’re taken from concert hall seat to the great outdoors.

Album Review – Duncan Chisholm Live at Celtic Connections

The Scotsman

***** Review – Celtic Connections Opening Concert, Glasgow

It’s been said about previous Celtic Connections first nights, but this really was the festival in a nutshell – as far as that’s remotely possible for a single concert, however lavish, when you’re talking about an 18-day event comprising hundreds of gigs, by artists from dozens of countries, spanning myriad musical styles.

Proceedings began with a graceful link back to the inaugural show back in 1994, as fiddler Duncan Chisholm – who headlined with Wolfstone on that occasion – led his own quartet in a typically choice selection of spine-tingling airs and fiendishly catchy dance tunes, meanwhile highlighting Celtic Connections’ Scottish traditional bedrock, as did Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis, with a mouthwatering foretaste of her forthcoming new album. This year’s Commonwealth strand, ahead of the Games, was flagged up both by redoubtable Quebecois visitors the Yves Lambert Trio, and a stirringly soulful, funky contribution from Malawi’s Peter Mawanga and the Amaravi Movement, whose guitar-led, marimba-patterned sound was at once hypnotically smooth and full of vibrant textures, interwoven with richly expressive male/female vocals.

Even amidst this diverse musical cornucopia, there was no mistaking the most thrilling section of the programme, which saw violinist Nicola Benedetti join forces with half a dozen or so leading folkies – including Fowlis, Chisholm, Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham – for a spellbinding encounter between classical and trad, in which Benedetti achieved moments of truly exquisite symbiosis, most of all in a brilliant cadenza slotted between two Scott Skinner tuns, and a sublime slow duet with Bain.

by Sue Wilson.

The Arts Desk

**** Review – Duncan Chisholm – Live at Celtic Connections

“It’s a gorgeous set that has a cinematic widescreen clarity, with a sense of place, landscape and history roving through its tunes.”

fRoots

Jan/Feb 2014

Chisholm is a Scottish traditional fiddle player, famous for his work with Wolfstone and The Julie Fowlis Band, and for his trilogy of solo albums Farrar, Canaich and Affric which are musical portraits of the three glens of Strathglass where Chisholm’s family roots run seven centuries deep. The glens are beautiful but desolate places as a result of the clearances of the Highland Gaelic people that took place in the 18th and 19th Centuries. This Live album completes Chisholm’s Strathglass project. In his own words: “The Strathglass Suite is based on my last three albums – making an orchestral arrangement around a core traditional band of six. The project required a fitting conclusion, where those cinematic episodes I had imagined could really come to life.” Accompanying on this album are Jarlath Henderson (uilleann pipes/whistles), Matheu Watson (guitar), Allan Henderson (piano/fiddle), Ross Hamilton (bass), Martin O’Neill (bodhran). The fifteen-strong string and brass ensemble are led by violinist Greg Lawson.

This album brims with love for the depopulated valleys where Chisholm grew up, and from which so many people were cleared and shipped to another continent. The soul of this music is akin to Klezmer, which also expresses the pain of expulsion and exile. Chisholm’s fiddle hits the same heartstrings as a slow nigun or doina played by Isaac Stern or Itzhak Perlman. Like Klezmer, this music does more than evoke a traditional rural culture: it also speaks of that culture’s catastrophic collision with history. Even the dance tunes are tinged with sadness. Like the Klezmorim, Chisholm is a master of the slow air, and he draws every drop of emotion out of each soulful note. Chisholm is keenly aware that the violin is the instrument that most closely resembles the human voice, and in all his music he tries to mimic the human voice as much as he can. His fiddle’s long, sustained notes tremble and shudder like a human voice sobbing with emotion. Try, for instance, Caoineadh Johnny Sheain Jeaic/ Nuair Bhios Mi Leam Fhin. The fiddle is so powerfully empathetic, it is difficult to listen without weeping.

By Paul Matheson

The Sunday Herald

Album Review – Duncan Chisholm – Live at Celtic Connections

Chisholm’s Strathglass Trilogy has just gained the perfect fourth instalment. Drawn from the three albums the Inverness-based fiddler recorded to capture the Highland landscape that his paternal line has called home for 700 years, the music on this superb recording brings his fiddle and band together with perfectly weighted string and brass arrangements that let his instrument sing with heartfelt longing, atmosphere and joy. So much of Chisholm’s own life, as well as his ancestors’, is bound up in these airs and dance tunes, and it is all communicated by a musician completely at the top of his game: the opening Unknown Air keening its yearning melody; the birth of his first son producing elation you can almost touch; and the parting Mallai Chroch Shli combining gorgeously measured windswept beauty on fiddle and wildly exciting piping from Jarlath Henderson. If you were at the concert, it will all come back to you in euphoric waves; if you weren’t, this will emphatically take you there.

By Rob Adams

The Guardian

14th November 2013

**** Album Review – Duncan Chisholm – Live at Celtic Connections

The title does this album scant justice. Yes, Scottish fiddle player Duncan Chisholm was at Celtic Connections this year, but it was a very special event. Joined by five of Scotland’s finest players and a string and brass ensemble, he gave the first performance of The Strathglass Suite, an ambitious instrumental work comprised of pieces from the three-album Strathglass Trilogy he has taken six years to make. Chisholm is best known for his role with folk-rockers Wolfstone and the Julie Fowlis band, but has emerged as a major solo artist with this epic tribute to the area of the Highlands where his family have lived for 700 years. This is cinematic music, with elegant, haunting airs matched against jaunty, rousing pieces, his delicate fiddle work joined by fiddle, bass, guitar and uilleann pipes.

Scottish Abum of the Year Award 2013

Longlist of nomations includes ‘Affric’

Duncan is delighted to hear that his latest release, Affric has been included within the longlist for the Scottish Music Industry Association’s ‘Scottish Album of the Year Award’. The 20 albums on the list represent a dazzling range of genres and musical styles highlighting, once again, the extraordinary depth of talent being produced in Scotland. Open to Scottish artists who released albums in 2012, the longlist is the product of a rigorous and thorough nomination process, with submissions received by 100 specially-invited nominators from the Scottish and UK music industries as well as elsewhere in the arts and media.

A four-week promotion of the music / artists included within the longlist will follow, allowing the public to stream every one of the twenty longlisted titles. Be sure to visit the SAY Award website here to download their app or read about and listen to the wealth of Scottish music that has been included within the longlist. Congratulations to all those artists on the list. It is wonderful to be part of a national arts prize which strives to focus attention on the Scottish music scene and in particular, on the fact that it has become one of the most vibrant, influential and well respected in the world. Enjoy the music….

BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards comes to Celtic Connections

fRoots

Album Review – Affric

On the quiet, Wolfstone founder member Duncan Chisholm has always been one of the finer and more expressive Scottish fiddlers, with a delicate touch and rare sensitivity when required. His solo album Affric marks the end of a six year project, being the final part of The Strathglass Trilogy, a musical representation of the highland glens that form the ancestral lands of the ancient Chisholm clan.

Songlines

**** Album Review – Affric

Final part of Caledonian concept-album trilogy.
Chisholm was born and raised near Inverness, in the Scottish Highlands. He learned under the late, great fiddler player, composer and instrument maker Donald Riddell, is a regular player with Julie Fowlis and has his own band, Wolfstone. Affric is the third and final part of his epic Strathglass Trilogy, six years in the making, following the previous volumes Farrar and Canaich.

Affric is Duncan’s musical homage to the ancient Chisholm clan lands north-west of Loch Ness. Glen Affric is home to ancient Caledonian pine woods, lochs, moorlands and mountains, and it’s easy to see them all moving through the mind’s eye as the 11 beautiful conceived instrumental tracks take us through a suite that begins with a traditional air, the kind of tune that Chisholm’s pure tone and expressive feel raises to the sublime. Self-penned tunes mix with pieces by Phil Cunningham, Rory Campbell and others, and there’s an excerpt from the poet Neil Munro’s ‘To Exiles’ read by piper Allan MacDonald. Other guests include Patsy Reid on fiddle and viola, Tony Byrne and Ross Hamilton on guitars – driving the evocative, beautiful ‘The Flooded Meadow’ – plus accordion, uillean pipes and Phil Cunningham’s piano. There’s a lot of musical variation throughout, with contrasting textures, tones and atmospheres, whether it be the guitar-driven otherworldliness of ‘The Erchless Scout‘, the lyrical warmth of ‘The House in Rose Valley‘ or the unadorned beauty and epic landscape of ‘Unknown Air‘. Beautifully recorded and presented, Affric represents some of the finest instrumental music from Scotland’s new generation of players.

By Tim Cumming

Songlines (Best Albums of 2012 – Affric)

Covering music from traditional and popular to contemporary and fusion, Songlines features artists from all around the globe. Duncan is delighted that Affric has been included within their Best Albums of 2012. Read all about why Songlines have hand picked an eclectic mix of music to be included within their ten Best of 2012, in the Jan / Feb 2013 issue of the magazine which will be available on general purchase on 7 December 2012. Affric will also be featured within the Songlines podcast for that issue.

SANDWOOD

About Duncan

Duncan Chisholm is one of Scotland’s most recognised and accomplished fiddle players and composers. Born and brought up near Inverness in the Highlands of Scotland, Duncan has spent most of his life developing his unique musical voice. Fiddle playing at its best, Duncan’s feather-light handling of dynamics and ornamentation, allied with his pure-distilled tone, lend his characteristic spine-tingling magic to his music.

Taught to play by the great Donald Riddell, few can match Duncan’s expressive feel for a Highland air. Duncan’s well-established musical career has taken him throughout the UK, Europe and the USA, both through his solo work and while playing with other musicians and bands. Duncan plays regularly with gaelic singing sensation Julie Fowlis, sets the heather on fire with his folk rock band Wolfstone and is much sought after as a composer and accompanist.

Duncan’s latest release Live at Celtic Connections, was recently awarded ‘Album of the Year’ at the Scots Trad Music Awards in December 2014. Performed at an exclusive concert as part of the world famous Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow, Duncan recorded this special event where he played music from his acclaimed Strathglass Trilogy of albums, as part of a six piece traditional band who were backed by an orchestral ensemble.

The culmination of six years work, The Strathglass Trilogy – Farrar, Canaich and Affric, is Duncan’s musical representation of the ancient Chisholm Clan lands. With such a personal interest in and connection to these Highland glens, Duncan has worked hard to instil great pride and passion into three individual but very much connected musical masterpieces. This unique and inspired idea of producing a suite of fiddle music recordings, influenced by one of the most beautiful wilderness areas of Scotland, gives a solid representation of Duncan’s ability to get right to the heart of a tune, and communicate the emotion behind it, in what seems a totally natural way.

Duncan’s first solo album, Redpoint catapulted his solo career into the public eye. The Door of Saints closely followed Redpoint; a beautiful album inspired by the music of Northern Spain. Duncan then embarked on his Strathglass Trilogy, mixing traditional tunes with contemporary sounds. Having composed music for several BBC documentaries and written more than half of the tunes presented on his latest release, Duncan has been labelled “the new sound of traditional Scotland.”

“My creative world widens with each passing year and the possibilities for self-expression are limitless. Enjoy the music.” Duncan Chisholm.